rockwell@socrates.umd.edu (Raul Rockwell) (07/01/91)
Raul Rockwell: How about if we say A is a language which has enumeration types and named parameters, and B is a language which does not? Would that be sufficient? Jim Showalter: Well, not really. There are a host of other things that A has the B does not that are all intended to increase readability. The two you list are just a small subset. Hmm.. there is something about this specification I don't like. Raul Rockwell (me): How about if I write a little piece of code to transfore the code from (1) into an unreadable mess? Let's see, it would strip comments, reduce all whitespace to a whatever is minimal for the language, and rename all definable tokens to a form like A0001, A0002, A0003, ... Jim Showalter: Well, first of all, this would then yield a program written in language B. ;-) Eh? Sounds like the definition of "programming language" has nothing to do with what the machine uses to compiler/interpret it. Language A and Language B can both be ADA, for instance. Jim Showalter: Secondly, if you have to go through that much effort to de-readability-ize language A, then you are basically arguing FOR my claim that it takes work to write badly in A. Since when is a simple transformation like that effort? Opps, forgot, "programing language" == "programming style". foo(arg1 => 37, arg2 => 'The sun', arg3 => 'TimesRoman') -- Raul <rockwell@socrates.umd.edu>